


Stitching Up Boys Is Different That Way

by feverishsea



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Eventual Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 03:25:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverishsea/pseuds/feverishsea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Good afternoon, then, Gandalf the Grey, though I might wish that it was a better afternoon for you than it is! Before I came across you it was a very fine afternoon, but perhaps it is only a good afternoon if you can be good on it. I am Belladonna Took, at your service, until I find your afternoon better than it is at the moment.”</p><p>The story of an unusual friendship, and the way it shaped two most unusual people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Even the Walls All Lean Closer

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Dessa's "Seamstress": Stitching up boys is different that way/You fix a bird, you buy a cage/You fix a man and/He flies away
> 
> Probably this should be crack, considering the material. It's not, somehow. It's also not at all the happy Thorin/Bilbo fluff I MEANT to write. Alas, maybe next time.
> 
> A wizard arrives exactly when they intend to, but I'm mostly over here: http://seatsreservedforheroes.tumblr.com/

Gandalf the Grey had seen many things. He had seen Valinor, as a being quite unlike the battered old form he inhabited in Middle Earth. He had seen many councils of elves and men and wizards. He had seen good, and he had seen evil.

He had never seen The Shire.

One could not simply walk in and out of Dol Guldur and remain unchanged, not these days. Gandalf knew that when he went in; knew that when he found the dying dwarf lord and took from him a key and map whose purposes were shadowy but urgent to him. He had learned the Necromancer’s true nature, and gained the suspicion that the One Ring might never have been delivered to the Sea by the river Aduin.

Oh, Gandalf had learned a great many things, but he had not expected to give up so much of himself in return.

It had been mere moments or perhaps days on end that he had battled the Necromancer’s power, so strong, even now. Gandalf had escaped that dark place in the end, but only through sheer chance and luck - he had backed away so far that the old cliff crumbled under his feet, and he fell away from Sauron’s sight long enough to run.

Terrified and exhausted, Gandalf couldn’t remember how he had come this way, or even how he had traveled. There was a vague memory in his mind of passing between forms, of reaching blindly for the more insubstantial form he had called his own before he came to Middle-Earth.

But now he was once again a Wizard, Gandalf the Grey, his body so tight around his soul that he feared it would strangle him. Gandalf stumbled one step further, caught a glimpse of green fields and little brown houses, and tumbled to the earth.

It smelled better than many lands he had traveled through, he thought absently as pain shivered up and down his body and racked his limbs. This place did not smell of rot, or evil. It smelled of growing things.

Gandalf was not certain what would happen if he were to die in this form, but he thought that perhaps this might be a good place to do it, if he must. Perhaps he would curl into the ground, and grow from it as something new.

A sudden high-pitched shriek cut into his dazed musings.

“Run, Bella!” If he had been in any state to react, Gandalf would have flinched away. “It’s not safe!”

A second voice, lower but musical and distinctly female, said, “I do not think we need to run, Lonnia. Look! It must be a Man, and surely he is hurt most sorely. Even if he would, he could not hurt us.”

The first voice came from further away this time when it sounded. “Men do not come here. They should not come here! Something is wrong, for him to be here. We must go!”

Gandalf felt a flicker of resigned irritation. He was a Wizard, not a Man. He would not like to die remembered so wrongly.

The second voice was closer now. There was a rustle of fabric, then he fancied a tiny ripple went through the ground near his head. “You must go, if you must, then. I will stay.”

A hand touched the side of his face, and Gandalf blinked as his head was turned toward bright sunlight. He had a hazy impression of dark eyes, dark hair, and a very firm chin.

“I believe you can hear me,” she said, pitched low, though Gandalf thought that her companion had run off. It must be a very dangerous place he had stumbled into, that the idea of a strange Man would alarm them so.

A dangerous place, or a very quiet one indeed.

“Yes,” he mumbled, though it pained him to do so. The dark eyes widened and the fingers against the side of his face clenched.

“And - and what are you, sir? Do you mean us harm?” She spoke slowly, as though it was necessary to draw the words out through her fear.

It was this, perhaps, that gave him the strength to shuffle upright, just a bit, and give the barest hint of a smile to her.

“I am Gandalf!” he said, “and Gandalf means… me.” There was no response.

He listed forward, and then an arm caught him around the back, and held him steady.

“Good afternoon, then, Gandalf the Grey, though I might wish that it was a better afternoon for you than it is! Before I came across you it was a very fine afternoon, but perhaps it is only a good afternoon if you can be good on it.” Her words tripped around him in circles until they somehow made sense again. With great effort, Gandalf turned his head to look at her face. She smiled at him, suddenly, and it was dazzling, for all that she was a very small creature. “I am Belladonna Took, at your service, until I find your afternoon better than it is at the moment.”

What a lot of things to use good afternoon for, Gandalf thought hazily. He peered at her.

“If you do not mind the asking, could you tell me where I am? I have wandered far and wide, and you and your kin are strange to me, as are these lands.”

The lass was much smaller than a Woman, and a bit smaller than a Dwarrowdam, but her presence seemed no lesser than either of them when she snorted and teased, “You would have me think of you as only a name, and yet you demand much knowledge of me, Gandalf my new friend! And yet I will tell you what you ask, for you have come to a friendly place, and it would not do for me to be a poor face of it.”

 _I am quite sure that is impossible_ , Gandalf tried to say, but after all he was very ill and he found the words beyond his strength to say.

Belladonna seemed to have an inkling of this, for she bustled around his wrecked form and Gandalf came to understand that she was pushing him to his feet and drawing him along, somehow leaning on a creature barely two-thirds his own height.

“You have come to The Shire, Master Gandalf, and welcome! You will find many small things here: small gossip, small plants, small Hobbits.”

 _Hobbits_ , he thought, and then slipped into blackness.

 

 

 

When Gandalf awoke, he was lying under a close ceiling in a dark room. His feet were dangling over the edge of a bed.

He sat up and two things happened at once: a loud BANG, and a great pain in his head.

Not more than a few moments later the door flew open, and light flooded in around the small form of Belladonna Took. In spite of the pain, Gandalf’s shoulders slumped in relief. So he was still here, in this odd little place, being watched over by something called a Hobbit.

“I’ll have to move that chandelier somewhere else.” Belladonna drew a match out of her pocket and struck the wick on the candle next to his bed. She shook the flame out of the match and stared at him, her eyes endless dark pools in the candlelight. Gandalf remembered other dark depths lit with the fires of an unholy creature, and pressed down a shiver.

“What exactly is a Hobbit?” he asked, before he could remember more. Gandalf thought that perhaps he recalled a scant phrase or two about a race much like this one in a very old book, but they were called Halflings, not Hobbits, and Gandalf could not imagine calling Belladonna half of anything.

“Curious, aren’t you?” Belladonna leaned over him and pulled off the blanket without so much as a warning. She frowned and started to poke and prod in the ways of one at least passingly familiar with nursing. She spared a second for another smile at him, and Gandalf realized that he was not in so much pain that he was unable to return it. “I can’t blame you; I’m rather the same, or so I’m told. But that’s unusual for my kind. Hobbits, as a whole, are peaceable, gentle creatures who like the comforts of a warm hearth and a full larder. We do not care overmuch for activity of most kinds, though we’re fair gardeners. Nothing grand though, not like the Elves in the stories, who grow forests and homes out of trees. We do not proclaim our existence to Middle-Earth. We just blend in. We grow little crops of corn and potatoes, and dig our homes into the sides of hills. Which is where you are now, by the way. This is my home.”

She poked one plump finger into a sore spot on his side, and he winced away. 

He said, “I am injured, as you can tell, but not in a manner that can be healed by any medicine. I only need a little peace, and the rest will repair itself.” He looked up at Belladonna’s bright face and tried for another smile. It wavered, but set. 

“I thank you greatly for your hospitality. If I could just trouble you for a bit more of it…”

Belladonna raised her eyebrows and gave him a knowing look. But then she smiled back, bright like the stars coming out from behind a cloud at night, so honest and clear that even an Elf might find beauty in it.

“You have gentle manners, my friend!” She laughed. “But there is no need of them here, for we Hobbits are at the least good hosts, and I would never dream of letting you leave until you were strong on your feet.”

If he had been more hale and hearty, the great Gandalf might have been offended, or at least amused, at this small soft creature ordering him about like a child, and talking of what she would or would not allow him to do.

But he was not well, not yet, and when Belladonna leaned over to blow the candle out, she rested her palm on his forehead for a moment with such a kind look at him that Gandalf shut his eyes then, so it could lull him to sleep.

His dreams were peaceful that night, and he found himself a little stronger the next morning.


	2. All The Things That We Do (To Pass the Time Between Wars)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A wizard arrives exactly when they intend to, but I'm mostly over here: http://seatsreservedforheroes.tumblr.com/

  
It was several weeks later and he was able to walk well again when Gandalf awoke to Belladonna stealing into his bedroom with the faintest hint of the dawn.

“Do you care for colors, my friend?” she asked. Gandalf was unsure what she meant, but she looked excited in such a rare way that he found himself agreeing and being hurried out of his room and out the very door with no more than his bedclothes on.

Very few hobbits were out this early, but the one or two who were fetching the paper or bustling in their gardens gave him suspicious looks and hurried back in their hobbit holes. Belladonna paid it no mind, and so Gandalf did not either. He sank down on the bench beside her, and thought how odd it was that he should feel so comfortable here, in the unlikeliest of places, looking a foot down to the hobbit lass beside him as she tapped her toes and waited for sunrise.

Her hand suddenly grasped his, and Gandalf’s head snapped up in surprise.

“Look! There!” Belladonna wasn’t looking at him at all; she was pointing toward the sky with the hand that did not hold his. The sunrise was an impressive one, admittedly, hued in fine shades of pink and gold. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Yes. Yes, it is lovely,” Gandalf said, but try as he might, he found Belladonna’s enthralled expression more interesting than even the prettiest sky.

 

 

 

“Honestly, Camillia, will you calm yourself?” Belladonna’s voice resonated down the hall. Gandalf did not mean to eavesdrop… well, not exactly, but he was curious and quite large, and this home was very small.

He heard the tinkle of a teacup crashing into a saucer, but daintily so.

“I shall not calm down. Whatever do you think you are doing, Bella? Taking up with some Man… some  _old_  Man, not to mention! Your reputation - however do you expect to find a suitor when he leaves? And mark my words, he will leave!”

Curious, how a point like that could dig under his skin - Gandalf rarely thought about how he was old and unattractive by mortal standards, but there was something about hearing it so starkly put, in these warm little halls, that lodged like a splinter.

There was a clang like a pot being set down. When Belladonna’s voice came, it was calm and reasoned.

“Of course he shall leave. He doesn’t belong here, does he? He is from elsewhere. And I have taken up with nobody, thank you very much. I have made a friend, given him a place to stay, and if that keeps suitors from me, well, good riddance to the lot of them.”

Gandalf should have been pleased indeed at her response, but he was not, though he couldn’t have said quite why.

 

 

 

“You are still out here, are you not?” Belladonna shouted at the front of the garden, and Gandalf hurriedly stowed away his materials in the woven basket she had given him just a few weeks ago, when Gandalf had finally healed enough to be restless. Belladonna had smiled to see him prowling through her library, brought him a basket, and told him that this was how she kept busy. The quirk of her eyebrow was permission enough: Gandalf had pilfered what he wanted from her cupboards as though he had a right to it.

“Yes, I am,” he called back, after his things were safely out of sight. “Have you need of me?”

Belladonna rounded the corner laughing; the way she looked pointedly at his basket and then away told him that she was not fooled, but she would let him keep his secrets. He couldn’t hold back a chuckle. This was a kindly, inconsequential secret, and it was very nice to have those, he had found. So many years of dark, dangerous secrets had begun to wear away at his soul, and he had never noticed it until he had been able to put them down for a minute.

“Only a need for the pleasure of your company,” she said lightly, and Gandalf barely even attempted to hide the smile that came over his face at her words.

"You talk rather a lot of nonsense for such a small hobbit," he told her, and chuckled when she glared.

They settled onto Belladonna's garden bench and watched the sunset. 

"You know," Gandalf began, without any real hope, "you could..."

Belladonna huffed out a sigh and shook her dark head.

"No," she said. "I could not."

Gandalf shook his head and appeared a pipe into his hand from his sleeve. He was getting his dexterity and tricks back, and though the other hobbits still looked at him most suspiciously, Belladonna kept fetching things that she thought might amuse him. It went past being a good hostess and into friendship, and Gandalf found himself often being sorry that he could not be a better friend in return.

"You need only a decent set of paints, and I have told you, it would be no trouble at all for me to..."

But Belladonna shook her head again and kept watching the sky.

"I appreciate the thought, truly, but I have tried. I can see it in my mind's eye, but... Hobbits do not make things, they merely make themselves a part of things. No matter how I try, my paints merely decorate a canvas. They cannot transform it any more than I can transform my life."

He had heard a part of this before, but not all of it, and a pang struck him, to hear one of the most remarkable beings he had ever met describe herself so. Gandalf set a comforting hand on her shoulder.

He wished to speak, to comfort her, and yet... her words were truthful. Gandalf thought her remarkable, yes, but he knew that in the eyes of one such as Saruman the White or Lady Galadriel, the greats of Middle-Earth, this hobbit lass would be as common as sandy stone.

"My dear, if I should have it my way..." he began, and her shoulder curved under his palm as she turned to look up at him.

"But you will not, will you?" She gave him a tired smile. Belladonna was too big for the Shire and too small for the world, the way that Gandalf was greater and lesser than the breadth of Middle-Earth all at the same time.

"I am sorry," he said honestly, and when Belladonna gave him that same sad smile and curled under his arm, he allowed his grey head to rest on top of her dark one for a moment. He was tired too.

 

 

News of the outside world rarely traveled to the Shire, but that did not mean Gandalf was unaware of it. Birds and butterflies were terrible, dangerous gossips if you could understand them, and one night a flaxen-haired elf stole upon him in Belladonna's garden. The elf professed to bear messages from Lord Elrond, but Gandalf felt the truth of it - the message came from a being of his own kind, one robed in white, the wisest and strongest of their kind here.

It made Gandalf greatly uneasy for reasons he could not quite name to see an elf in the gentle rolling hills of the Shire. He would have liked to think that he would have left on his own, but in reality, it was a familiar little hand that gave him a kindly push out the door.

"The world outside is in the your blood now, I can feel it," Belladonna told him, barely bothering to disguise the brightness of her eyes. "When will you go?"

He thought of saying many things: Of telling her that he would not leave for a year yet, or at least six months, or asking if he might stay to shelter here forever.

"And you should go soon," Belladonna added, smiling through her tears. "If your errands were not urgent, I cannot imagine that you would look so grave, or that you should have been so terribly wounded when we met."

Gandalf nodded unwillingly. "It is so. I should... I should have departed weeks hence, if I am truthful. And now that I am forced to confront it, I know that I should truly leave no later than the morning."

Tears fell down her cheeks freely now, and when Belladonna moved toward him, Gandalf did not think twice about stooping down and pulling her into a tight hug.

"It goes without saying," she managed, "that if you could, you would have taken me with you, does it not?"

Gandalf pressed a kiss to her wet cheek.


End file.
